Circles Co. Collective took home multiple awards at the American Advertising Awards, better known as the ADDYs, for the Amarillo chapter of the American Advertising Foundation. We were honored to put our best campaigns, marketing materials and websites of 2019 in front of the judges.

The final count: nine awards for consumer websites, three for logo design, and more for print marketing materials and illustration. Our graphic design intern, Blake Cripps, also had a big night with his student entries.

What the ADDYs are

The American Advertising Awards are the advertising industry’s own competition, run through local chapters of the American Advertising Foundation. Agencies and creative teams enter work they produced during the past year, and judges review it by category: websites, logos, print, video, self-promotion and more.

For us, that meant the Amarillo chapter’s 2020 awards, judging the work we made for clients and for ourselves in 2019.

The work that was recognized

Here is everything that won, as it was announced.

• Gold. Consumer websites for Holly Furtick, Watershed Music Group and Northshore Church, plus Advertising/Self-Promotion, Special Event Materials.
• Silver, websites. Consumer websites for Hohe Design, Gateway Church Conference, Sphere Homes, Pink Impact, Casa and our own site, Circles Co. Collective.
• Silver, logos. Logo design for Holly Furtick, Circles Co. Collective and Quadrant Biosciences.
• Silver, print and video. Printed Sales and Marketing, Annual Report for FBSW; Self-Promotion Brand Elements, Special Events Materials; Short Film, Revisions; and Sales Presentation, Circles Conference Recap.
• Honorable mention. Advertising Industry Self-Promotions, Special Event Materials, for the Circles Conference 2019 campaign.
• Student work. Blake Cripps won two Gold ADDYs, a special judges award and best of show for his student submissions.

Nine of those awards went to consumer websites, each built for a different client with a different audience. That range is the part we are proudest of.

What awards mean for clients

An award is a nice night out, but it is not the reason anyone builds a website. Each of these sites was made to do a job: help the right people find a client, understand what they offer and take the next step. The judges saw the polish. The clients saw whether people called, visited and signed up.

That is the standard worth holding any design partner to, award or not. A good site is clear about who it serves, easy to use on a phone, and built to turn a visit into a next step. If you are weighing whether your own site is pulling its weight, our piece on starting your marketing with your website walks through what a strong one does.

Awards also say something about a team: that it cares about craft when nobody is grading. The same attention that goes into a competition entry should go into the contact form, the page speed and the copy on your services page.

Your next step

Thank you to every client who trusted us with the work behind these awards, and to the Amarillo chapter of the American Advertising Foundation for the recognition.

If you are planning a new website or a refresh, start by writing down the one thing you want visitors to do, then look at whether your current site makes that easy. When you are ready for help, you can see our work and get in touch at Circles Co.